Many forms of discrimination at the workplace are subtle. Applicants who don't get the job or employees who don't get promoted don't usually have much evidence to prove it was because of their age, sex or race.

But pregnancy discrimination is different. Employers often spell out why an employee's pregnancy affected hiring, promotion and other employment decisions.

Sometimes it's a well-meaning supervisor who refuses to allow pregnant employees to perform dangerous duties. Other times it's a supervisor who tells pregnant employees that taking off for maternity leave just isn't going to work with the company's busy schedule.

"Lots of times, employers admit to it," said David Lopez, general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington.

Employers not only tell their employees why they're restricting work activities, but they put the explanations in writing, said Lopez, who was in Houston recently to make a presentation at a legal seminar.

The agency issued the guidelines earlier this month, replacing an earlier directive from 1991.

"It's an incredibly big issue," Lopez said. And frustrating that employers haven't learned that federal law prohibits hiring, firing and other employment decisions based on pregnancy, childbirth, lactation or other fertility issues.

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Between 1997 and 2013, the agency saw a 34 percent jump in the number of pregnancy discrimination complaints filed.

"Employers don't seem to get it, or they refuse to get it," Lopez said.

Many of the problems stem from persistent stereotypes, such as fears on the part of employers that pregnant women may pass out on the job or that they shouldn't do anything that is remotely dangerous.

Employers may not believe they're discriminating against their employees when they impose special restrictions because they don't have any ill will, Lopez said.

But it's still discrimination, he said.

Education effort

The agency can't sue all employers that violate the law and is hoping to get the word out in the employment community through outreach and education.

Hanna Norvell, chair of the labor and employment practice group at Locke Lord in Houston, recommended that employers take a few minutes to read the guidelines.

They're helpful and comprehensive, and they include examples of how several federal laws intersect with pregnancy and childbirth, Norvell said.

The new guidelines focus on the relationship between two federal laws: the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

They close a loophole between the two laws and put employers on notice that while pregnancy is a temporary condition, it can create impairments such as high blood pressure and diabetes, said Jessica Glatzer Mason, an employment lawyer with Gardere in Houston. Employers have to make accommodates for those disabilities.

In the guidelines, he EEOC cited a landmark case from Houston that established the responsibility of employers to provide accommodations to lactating employees.

Last year, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that firing a woman because she is lactating is unlawful sex discrimination. The case stemmed from a case filed by the EEOC on behalf of a woman who contended she was fired after asking if she could pump breast milk when she returned to work after giving birth.

The new guidelines also address a common stereotype that women are the ones who take care of children and should be the only ones entitled to parental leave.

If a company provides parental leave to women, it has to provide it to men, too, Lopez said. It's the same with paternity leave; if men get time off to bond with their newborn, the same time must also be given to women.

Light duty

The guidelines also clarify the agency's position on light-duty assignments, contending that companies can't just restrict them to employees who have been injured on the job, Norvell said. Companies must make those same accommodations available to pregnant employees whose physicians put restrictions on them.

However, the district courts are split on the subject, and the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case this fall in which an employer contends its light-duty accommodations for injured employees don't extend to pregnancy-related complications.

The EEOC's position won't be binding on the Supreme Court, Mason said, but the timing suggests the high court will be able to make its ruling by examining some of the real-world experience companies are having with the new guidelines on pregnancy accommodations.